


Piano in the Dark

by Miss_M



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Breaking Up & Making Up, Established Relationship, F/M, J/B Shuffled Challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-26
Updated: 2013-10-26
Packaged: 2017-12-30 12:41:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1018752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_M/pseuds/Miss_M
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She has never felt lonelier than on the night she decides to leave him. </p><p>A response to the Jaime/Brienne Shuffled Challenge</p>
            </blockquote>





	Piano in the Dark

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [Piano in the Dark](http://www.lyrics007.com/Brenda%20Russell%20Lyrics/Piano%20In%20The%20Dark%20Lyrics.html) by Brenda Russell. I own nothing.

There’s no point. They have done nothing but watch the clock ticking down between them for weeks, months now. 

Mostly they argue. They still touch with the same fervor as they did in the beginning, as they always do. And every touch, every kiss, every shared sigh only delays what seems inevitable. 

Brienne leans against the headboard, feeling more naked than her physical state alone warrants, and looks at the inert thing her relationship with Jaime has become. In the light of day, between work and errands and arguments and occasional kisses, it still seems to twitch. It shows signs of life, tiny spasms. 

In the nighttime room, it is motionless, already rotting. They just can’t smell its stench yet. They don’t want to, but Brienne is tired of her own cowardice. 

She rubs her sand-gritty eyes, tired, so tired, yet wide awake. It is so late the noises of the city have dwindled to a dull susurrus, almost music you could slow dance to, the streets reduced from rivers of light to mere trickles of insomniac windows, the occasional passing car. They might as well be adrift on a life raft.

Their window is dark, all the better to hide what Brienne intends as she sits on their bed with Jaime asleep beside her, his back to her, a dim, long expanse of naked skin within easy reach of her hand. 

When he was inside her earlier, whispering of want and love ( _her name, her name and his, again and again_ ), the whole world seemed to shrink to the space taken up by their bodies. Two bodies moving as one, occupying the same space at the same time, defying physical laws. Now, Brienne cannot seem to remember any of it: his touch, his cutting humor, his looks, his rages, whatever made her believe this could work between them. There is no room for any of it on their bed.

 _His_ bed. It might be easier if she thinks of it as his bed. 

She is a fool to even tell herself it will help, when her body still knows him. He is all her body knows, and it cannot be lied to so easily. 

She will get nowhere if she just keeps sitting ( _she will stay nowhere, caught in the untenable middle, with him_ ). She rises, slowly, so as not to wake him, goes to gather her clothes. The night holds its breath around her, her accomplice. 

“Never thought you’d be such a coward,” Jaime says from the bed. He doesn’t move, doesn’t turn to transfix her with his eyes through the dark, a thief caught red-handed. His back is motionless with sleep, but his voice is wide awake. “Sneaking out in the middle of the night.” 

There is anger in his voice, and resignation, and a great tiredness. Yet he does not move. 

Brienne could hit him. She could cry. She wants to do both. Most of all, she wants to walk through the bedroom door and keep going until she walks into the ocean, and it rises to cover her head and drown her. Anything but this, this directionless spinning, hamsters in a wheel. This Möbius strip of arguments and passion and struggle, and never any peace or contentment. 

She wants to pelt him with accusations like stones, but her body won’t let her, her throat closes around jagged, tearful words. He never stole her heart. She gave it away, practically flung it at him soon after they met. Long before she could admit as much to him, and longer still to herself. 

“Don’t go.” 

She has never heard him sound so naked. She notices that the muscles in his arm are tense, like he is gripping the sheets in front of his chest, where she cannot see. Holding himself together in that handful of soiled sheets. Holding them together, sympathetic magic. 

“Brienne, don’t go.” 

Tears do spill then. He always could play her like a piano, his clever, knife-thin words sliding in through all the chinks in her armor, squeezing her heart and lungs so she cannot breathe and doesn’t particularly want to. She can no longer remember how she ever lived alone, and was lonely, and safe. 

A part of her still wants to hit him, to scream, but Jaime is not playing her now. He is not demanding ( _fuck me_ ), he is not provoking ( _you’ll be back_ ), he is not staking a claim ( _love, lust, love_ ). She knows his history, but maybe he can no longer remember how he was before her either. 

Brienne feels torn apart, raked by claws of desire and fury. And want, that helpless, blindly grasping thing which knows no reason, only what must be. If she stays, they will only argue again tomorrow or the day after, but she does not feel pulled back, reeled in, tethered against her will. There is simply no other way for her to be. She would rather fight with Jaime than fight the world on her own, and be alone, and safe. There is no safe. She can no more regret this certainty than she can resent her heart for beating, her body for being what it is. 

She walks slowly back and climbs up onto the bed behind Jaime. Embraces him, folds herself to his back and legs with ease, the way her body learned to be with him without her needing to think about it. Her cheek is still wet when she presses it against his shoulder, when his hand loosens on the bunched sheets and takes her hand. Brings it up to brush his dry lips across her knuckles and tuck their hands under his chin, a lover’s knot of fingers. His pulse point under her thumb the steady rhythm with which the night turns and goes out to meet the day.


End file.
